Description
Feminist, queer and race-critical research has long since pointed out how racist, heteronormative and patriarchal orders structure western societies, and how the ordinary and the everyday come to be potent lieus for the reinvigoration of said orders. Following their lead, this paper interrogates the sentimentalities that shape ordinary experiences of community and belonging in European nation-states in ways that enable said violences. Building on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with members from both queer and racialised communities in East Germany, I argue that these sentimentalities invisibilise the experiences of marginalised people and invite violence towards them. Through the lens of marginalised people’s anger, I uncover the latent white supremacist and patriarchal violences that permeate prominent instantiations of (living in) community in East Germany and trace their connections to histories of colonial and patriarchal oppression. This helps me unsettle white majoritarian feelings of enjoyment and entitlement vis-à-vis notions of community and belonging and make overt their coloniality. Ultimately, this paper makes an important contribution to re-thinking how IR can center those most adversely affected by on-going regimes of racist and patriarchal violence and how our epistemologies surrounding nationhood, the politics of belonging and affect can serve that political end.
